Questions We Want Answered From the Showtime Series
Showtime’s hit thriller Yellowjackets is set to return for season two in just a few short weeks. Season one was an immediate hit, garnering quite a bit of attention with stars like Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis at the helm and an impressively whopping seven primetime Emmy nominations.
In the beginning, the show seems as though it is set to follow a traditional, realistic storyline about a high school girl’s soccer team stranded as a result of a plane crash and their journey to get back home. And that would not be an inaccurate description of the show; however, as season one progresses, fans realize that there is something much deeper, much more sinister going on, and we were left with no shortage of questions come the pilot season’s chilling finale.
Did the Girls Resort to Cannibalism While Stranded?
In various flashbacks that we see from the survivors’ adult selves, one image sticks out pretty clearly: the image of a human body hanging upside down and seemingly drained of blood. This picture is something that gets shown time and time again, presumably as a shared memory among all the survivors. This image, among other things, suggests that, because of how long the team has been trapped in the wilderness, they have resorted to cannibalism.
Throughout the season, many of her teammates have butt heads with Jackie, their team captain. As their time stranded progresses, tensions rise more and more between Jackie and her fellow Yellowjackets, and the season culminates with Jackie’s tragic death; after an argument with her supposed best friend Shauna, played by Lynskey, surrounding the fact that Shauna is pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby, she decides to sleep outside and ends up freezing to death overnight. Jackie’s death alludes to the possibility that perhaps it’s her body that we see hanging upside down in the flashbacks. Could the rumors surrounding cannibalism be true? Will the girls honor Jackie by burying her body, or will they use her corpse for other purposes?
Before the girls’ attempt at boosting morale with a ‘Doomcoming,’ Misty drugs almost everyone with hallucinogenic mushrooms. What was meant to be a lighthearted party and good time resulted in chaos and masses of fallout within the group. Part of that chaos surrounds Travis, the son of the team’s head coach and one of only three males who was stranded. While under the influence of the shrooms, the girls become obsessed with devouring Travis, mainly in a sexual manner, but things start to go further than that, and a group of the girls which includes Shauna and Lottie (two of the confirmed survivors) chasing him through the forest while he runs for his life. We know that Travis survives the wilderness as we see his death occur on screen in the 2021 timeline. But could this chase be the first domino in a sequence that eventually leads to cannibalism?
Is Lottie Heading a Cult as a Result of Her Getting Possessed?
Earlier in season one, when the team finds an abandoned cabin to take shelter in, they are settling into what looks like a typical scene of girls at summer camp: sitting around on the floor of a cabin playing games like truth or dare or would you rather. However, things take a sharp turn, both that night and in the series itself, after Lottie becomes possessed and starts to speak in tongues and languages that, she later confirms, she does not speak. Whatever possessed her eventually left her body, and she doesn’t recall anything from the last few minutes.
While we don’t see much on this point in season one, we do see references to a symbol that seems to be a signifier of a group, presumably a cult, that came out of the plane crash. Could this be related to her getting possessed in 1996? Additionally, though not confirmed until the end of the season finale, we know that Lottie has also survived until 2021 and is responsible for emptying Travis’s bank account after he died. Nat has this figured out after a pseudo-investigation resulting from her refusing to accept that Travis could have died by suicide. However, before Nat can hear this confirmation from her ex-sponsor, who just so happens to leave Nat a voicemail explaining that she feels she is being followed, Nat is kidnapped from her motel room. It seems that the people who have kidnapped Nat work for Lottie now, which leads to speculation surrounding what Lottie could be up to. Is she still leading a cult 25 years later? Why is she taking Travis’s money, and why would she potentially kidnap Nat before she could find out?
There are definitely more loose ends to be tied up in what has promised to be an equally compelling season two, and we can expect to get some answers on Mar. 24, when the new season premieres on Showtime.